Largest Chemical Companies Research Articles

BASF VENTURES FORTH

GERMANY'S LARGEST CHEMICAL company has turned to venture capital to keep tabs on what some of the smallest companies in the industry are up to. BASF Venture Capital GmbH was founded in April 2001 w...

Multi-site utility integration—an industrial case study

Mitsubishi Kasei and Mitsubishi Petrochemical merged to become Mitsubishi Chemical in 1994 making it the largest chemical company in Japan. This allows two original companies’ production sites, especially for those are physically built next to each other, to improve themselves by multi-site integration. Mitsubishi Yokkaichi production plant site is one of the typical examples, which consists of three individual plant sites in the old company structure. Each plant site contains a utility plant to generate steam and electricity for chemical production. After the company merge, connecting steam and electricity among plant sites have been carried out for better flexibility, efficiency as well as capability of the utility systems. Besides these, there are still many other improvement alternatives. A site-model, which includes all three utility plants and production units, was then developed to explore further opportunities. In this paper, applications at Mitsubishi Yokkaichi production site are presented to illustrate the features of the site-model.

Technology Strategies in the Knowledge Economy: The Licensing Activity of Himont

The exchange of technologies and technological knowledge — through joint-ventures, partnerships, licensing, cross-licensing, R&D contracts — and the upsurge of markets for technology are main features of the "knowledge-based" economy. Accordingly, companies are gradually changing their aptitude towards technology trading and exchange. This paper discusses the extent of technology licensing in chemicals, and considers the licensing strategies adopted by large chemical companies. Specifically, by analysing the case of Himont — widely involved in licensing its process technology — this paper explores the motivations for technology licensing, the managerial solutions that Himont adopted for licensing its technology, and the implications of this strategy in terms of antitrust policy. One of the main results emerging from the analysis is the role of external technology suppliers. By increasing the potential competition in the downstream product market, they create incentives for incumbent firms to license-out their technologies, and earn additional profits in the market for technology.

SUMITOMO, MITSUI DROP MERGER PLAN

SUMITOMO CHEMICAL AND Mitsui Chemicals have abandoned merger talks to create the world's fifth largest chemical company after they failed to agree on their respective values. A financial industry source tells C&EN that Sumitomo demanded that Mitsui shares be exchanged for Sumitomo shares at lower than their stock market value, something that Mitsui opposed. On April 1, the day after the cancellation was announced, Sumitomo shares dropped by 16% and Mitsui's, by 8%. Mitsui said it regretted that it could not meet the expectations of shareholders, customers, and many other parties. One justification for the merger was to facilitate implementation of large projects like a new petrochemical complex in Singapore. Broad agreement on how to run the future company had been reached since November 2000, when the proposed merger was announced. Last summer, Sumitomo's president, Hiromasa Yonekura, told C&EN that he expected synergies worth $800 million. The companies were set to move into a new ...

CUSTOM CHEMICAL OPPORTUNITIES

PORTFOLIO TRIMMING BY large chemical companies is creating opportunities for smaller companies and entrepreneurs in the fine and custom chemicals industry. Hickson DanChem, a contract manufacturer based in Danville, Va., has been purchased from Arch Chemicals by the investment firm American Capital Strategies and DanChem management. American Capital is paying $29 million for a 75% stake in the company, which will be renamed DanChem Technologies. Arch acquired DanChem as part of its acquisition of Hickson International in 2000; Arch is still trying to sell a Hickson organics plant in Castleford, England. In a second deal in the Southeast, Irix Pharmaceuticals of Florence, S.C., has signed an agreement to purchase a commercial pharmaceutical chemicals plant in Greenville, S.C., from the Swiss firm Schweizerhall. Irix is a five-year-old company founded by former Hoffmann-La Roche executives to provide pharmaceutical ingredients for discovery support through Phase II clinical trials. According to CEO J. Guy S...

The social and psychological impact of the chemical contamination incident in Weston Village, UK: a qualitative analysis

This paper contributes to the literature on community response to the announcement of well-established chemical contamination close to their homes. It describes a study of residents’ views of chemical contamination on a close and long-standing community in the context of impacts on everyday life. This followed the discovery early in 2000 that houses in Weston Village, in the County of Cheshire, England, were contaminated by the chemical hexachlorobutadiene which was seeping from a sealed chemical waste quarry owned by Imperial Chemical Industries, one of the world's largest chemical companies. Qualitative methods were used for the study. A total of 23 people from the village were interviewed in 15 focused, semi-structured interviews. This study highlights the importance of attention to secondary, community-level and interpersonal-level health impacts in the face of epidemiological uncertainty.

Inorganic identity crisis

Looking at inorganic chemistry from afar, it has the appearance of a huge monolithic entity, built primarily from large chemical companies. But in recent years, that monolith has started to shrink, as companies within the industry pursue their policies of consolidation. News of mergers and layoffs certainly isn't encouraging to the existing ranks of inorganic chemists, nor does it invite students to consider joining them.

SUMITOMO, MITSUI: CREATING A GIANT

WHEN SUMITOMO CHEMIcal and Mitsui Chemicals complete their merger in 2004, the resultant firm will be one of the world's largest chemical companies. Had it existed last year, such an entity would have been fifth in C&EN's Global Top 50 ranking of the world's largest chemical companies. By virtue of its size, the $20 billion firm will be able to strengthen activities from petrochemicals to household insecticides that would otherwise be too vulnerable to competition. Merger talks are progressing well, says Sumitomo Chemical President Hiromasa Yonekura, who cochairs the companies' merger committee with Mitsui Chemicals President Hiroyuki Nakanishi. Outsiders have a positive view of the merger. Moody's raised Mitsui Chemicals' debt rating in April. It said earlier this month that the outlook for Sumitomo is positive. Sumitomo and Mitsui will combine their $1.8 billion polyolefin operations this October. Deciding how to merge the rest of their highly diversified product range will take longer. But the ...

Application of coupled solver technology to CFD modeling of multiphase flows with CFX

Over the past ten years the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in chemical engineering has increased at a significant rate. Most of the large chemical engineering companies now use CFD daily in their design process, in problem solving and in improving performance of plants and equipment. The complexity of the problems tackled by CFD is increasing dramatically as the CFD technology advances and is delivered to users in an accessible and user friendly format. Multiphase flows are involved in almost all of the processes in chemical engineering, for examples: gas bubbles in liquid columns, solid particles in mixing vessels, liquid droplets in spray dryers. Multiphase flow problems are inherently very complex. Many of the physical processes (heat, mass and momentum) are linked and coupled between the phases. Despite the difficulties, many successful CFD calculations have been reported in the literature. In most of the current CFD algorithms for multiphase flows such as Spalding's IPSA method, a segregated solution method is used. The momentum, continuity and other equations are solved in separate steps. The whole calculation sequence must be iterated many times (typically thousands of iterations) for the solution to address all the coupling tenns properly and converge to the final solution. For single-phase flows, convergence speed can be improved by using what is known as a coupled solver technology. Within this technique the governing transport equations are all solved simultaneously. This strategy has been implemented in CFX-5 to model two-phase flows. In this paper we will describe the coupled solver technology implemented in the CFX-5 software and examine the advances of this technology in tenns of CFD performance on a real twophase example with published experimental data.

Dow Chemical's CEO William Stavropoulos on structure and decision making

Executive Overview Dow Chemical Corporation is the fifth largest chemical company in the world, with annual sales of more than $20 billion. The firm provides more than 2,400 product families and services, including chemicals, plastics, energy, argricultural products, and environmental services. Headquartered in Midland, Michigan, Dow operates 115 manufacturing sites in 37 countries, and employs 43,000 people. Throughout its 100-year history, the company has focused heavily on research and development and has created such well-known products as Saran Wrap, ziploc plastic bags, and Spray'n Wash stain stick, and Glass Plus multisurface cleaner, as well as many industrial products. The company has won a host of awards, including the National Safety Council award for Distinguished Achievement in Occupational Safety and Health and has been named by Fortune magazine as one of the country's top 10 environmental champions. Dow has been restructuring its product lines and focusing on chemistry-related businesses in order to achieve its mission for the 21st century: to be the most productive, best value growth chemical company in the world. In pursuit of this mission, the company is in the process of acquiring the Union Carbide Company. William S. Stravopoulos is the president and chief executive officer of Dow Chemical. He holds a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry from Fordham University and a doctorate in medicinal chemistry from the University of Washington. His career with Dow began in Indianapolis in 1967 when he joined the firm as a research chemist. He became director of marketing for the Dow U.S.A. Plastics Department in 1979, and was named commercial vice president for Dow Latin America in 1980. He became president and chief operating officer in April 1993, and was appointed CEO on November 1, 1995. He is a board member of the American Plastics Council, Bell South Corporation, and Chemical Bank. The following interview conveys his views on decision making and structuring in the company and concludes with an update on the acquisition of Union Carbide.

Dow plans to make the most of its accidental rubber role

Afunny thing happened to Dow Chemical along the way to becoming the world's third largest chemical company: It became a top producer of synthetic rubber as well Through the acquisition of three diversified companies—BSL, Sentrachem, and, soon, Union Carbide—Dow has accumulated, almost by accident, a position in styrene-butadiene, polybutadiene, and other rubbers rivaled only by the likes of Bayer and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. The job of pulling these assets together into a cohesive business—while deciding what to do with some loose ends—falls to Karl-Heinz Geigl, Dow's global business director for synthetic rubber. Geigl readily admits that Dow never set out to be a synthetic rubber producer. Rather, the company found itself in the business in April 1995 after it signed a landmark agreement with the German government to take over the Buna Sow Leuna Olefinverbund (BSL) chemical complex in the former East Germany. Dow was interested in BSL largely because it saw ...

Elf Atochem stakes claim to life as independent firm

The merger battle between Elf Aquitaine and TotalFina is coming down to the fate of the two companies' chemical operations and how they ultimately will be treated. Last week, Elf took its case public. Jacques Puechal, the chairman of Elf Atochem—the chemicals arm of Elf Aquitaine—admires large, broad-ranging, and independent chemical companies. So much so that he wants Elf Atochem to become one. In briefings to the press and financial analysts in Paris last week, he made his case for taking that course. Puechal's efforts are one of a host of actions that Elf Aquitaine is taking in a drive to win the hearts and minds of investors in its takeover bid-counterbid confrontation with TotalFina (C&EN, July 26, page 9). These actions include a no-layoff pledge by Elf designed to gain union support. The takeover proposals from the two companies are very similar when it comes to both parties' oil operations. But there is ...

Stronger yen will likely harm Japanese firms

News Analysis In June and July, there was a near panic over the weakening yen when its value went as low as 146 to the U.S. dollar. In early October, its value shot up as high as 111 to the greenback. stronger yen is prompting worries that companies in Japan, including chemical firms, will be less competitive and therefore have lower profits. This is not good news, says Kenichiro Yagasaki, a manager in the chemicals group of trading company Mitsubishi Corp. Because prices of chemicals are quoted in dollars internationally, the weak yen has in recent months boosted the margins of Japanese firms. When the yen is cheap, the price in yen terms will increase, Yagasaki observes. He further points out that large Japanese chemical companies rely on exports partly to maintain higher operating rates and cover their fixed cost. Not all companies are affected to the same extent. At Asahi Chemical, says secu ...

ASIA: STAYING THE COURSE Financially strong chemical companies see depressed area as an opportunity for expansion

One Chinese word sums up the state of mind of those who have to make strategic decisions in Asia for international chemical companies. Made up of two characters, one meaning danger and the other opportunity, weiji is the way the Chinese express the idea of crisis. More than one year into the Asian financial crisis, chemical company executives say they are carefully looking for new opportunities in the region. Thailand let the baht float freely on July 2, 1997, precipitating a domino effect of tumbling currencies across the region. Asian economies have been spiraling downward ever since, as economists keep pushing further into the future their estimates of when the bottom will be reached. But despite this, the world's largest chemical companies are changing very little of their Asian strategies. Sticking to the same basic road map, the majority are merely slowing expansion, albeit to an extent that varies widely. In some cases, dramatic ...

Strategic environmental management in the Greek chemical industry: results from an exploratory study of selected companies

The aim of this paper is to explore the state of environmental management of three large chemical companies in Greece, using the case study approach. To begin with, a number of models of corporate environmental responsiveness are reviewed and compared. Two of them are used as a basis for classifying the selected firms. An operational tool is developed, in order to gather qualitative data from the companies regarding their environmental responsiveness. The findings suggest that, although Greek chemical companies are environmentally conscious, they conform to rather than advocate environmental issues. Implications are, then, drawn from the study and suggestions are made for a proactive environmental responsiveness in the context of the Greek chemical industry. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Small firms benefit from big restructurings

As the large multinational chemical companies restructure and consolidate, opportunities are arising for smaller, often privately held, firms to acquire businesses the majors no longer want. Recent acquisitions by companies such as Pilot Chemical, InChem, and PVS Chemicals show that there are plenty of takers for the cast-off units of big firms such as Olin, Witco, and Rhodia. Pilot Chemical, a specialty surfactants maker based in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., recently acquired Olin's alkyl diphenyl oxide disulfonate surfactants business. Neil A. Burns, Pilot's vice president of marketing, says Pilot will move production to its Lockland, Ohio, plant, where its Calfax disulfonate surfactants are already made. Olin put its Brandenburg businesses up for sale in October 1996 as part of a series of restructuring initiatives that included the spin-off of its ordnance and aerospace divisions and the sale of its isocyanates unit to Arco Chemical. BASF acquired most of the surfactants business at the site last ...

Making safety second nature

From the 1960s onwards, the chemical and oil industries developed and used a number of new safety techniques which, in time, became second nature to those who applied them. They included the use of QRA for deciding priorities, Hazop and audits for identifying problems, inherently safer design for avoiding hazards, and more thorough investigation of incidents for identifying underlying causes. However, it has not yet become second nature to remember the accidents of the past and the actions needed to prevent them happening again. I joined industry in 1944 and moved to production in 1952. Then, and for at least 15 years afterwards, safety was a non-technical subject that could be left to arts graduates and elderly foremen. There was concern that people should not be hurt—great attention was paid to the lost-time accident rate—but there was no realization, that it was a subject worthy of systematic study by experienced technologists. This view changed at the end of the 1960s. A new generation of plants had been built, operating at higher temperatures and pressures and containing larger inventories of hazardous chemicals; the result was a series of fires and explosions and a worsening fatal accident rate. Figure 1 shows the situation in ICI, at the time the UK, s largest chemical company. Other companies experienced a similar state of affairs. As a result in 1968, I was appointed one of the company's first technical safety advisers, an unusual appointment at the time for someone with my experience, and if the reason for my appointment had not been so obvious I would have wondered what I had done wrong. I and my colleagues tried to apply the same sort of systematic thinking to safety that we applied in our other professional work. We developed some new concepts and techniques and adopted others. A common feature of our ides, realized only in restrospect, was that they consisted of more than mere problem-solving techniques. Once people had got used to these new concepts and used them a few times, they began to look at a whole range of problems in a different way.

DOW EXPANDS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Dow Chemical has agreed to acquire Sentrachem Ltd., based in Johannesburg, South Africa, for about $446 million. The acquisition would elevate Dow at a stroke to a significant presence in that African country. Sentrachem rang up sales of $1.05 billion in fiscal 1996, which ended last Aug. 31, making it the third largest chemical company in South Africa, after AECI and Sasol. Dow's sales in South Africa were only about $54 million in 1996. Dow's offer has already been approved by Sentrachem's largest shareholder, Sankorp Ltd., which holds almost 39% of the chemical producer's shares. And Sentrachem's management is favorable to the takeover offer, pegged at 10.50 South African rands (about $2.25) per share. On the Friday before Dow's offer last week, Sentrachem's shares closed at 7.92 rands. Sentrachem is a decentralized collection of businesses, including specialty chemicals, agricultural chemicals, chloralkali derivatives, fine chemicals, and latexes and rubbers. It also is a partner with Hoechst ...

Organizational Learning in Cooperative Alliances: Some Case Studies in Biotechnology

Dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs) have played an important role in commercializing biotechnology. They emerged first in the US and, after a 5-year time lag, they also appeared in Europe. Faced with long and costly product lead times, DBFs raised money by entering into research contracts, mainly with large chemical and pharmaceutical companies. These coopertive research alliances have not vanished as biotechnology has matured and are more in evidence today than they were in the early dasy of the commercialization of biotechnology. This paper investigates how and why large and small companies enter research collaborations, what they learn from working together, and the effects on European competitiveness.

German chemical union assails sick-leave cut

German chemical workers and employers are heading toward confrontation over a federal law that authorizes employers to cut sick-leave pay. The law took effect Oct. 1. Under the Program for Growth and Jobs, chemical firms and other employers can lower sick-leave pay to 80% of regular wages instead of 100% (C&EN, Oct. 7, page 16). Workers can keep sick-leave pay at 100% if they give up one vacation day for every five sick days they take. The law affords German employers an additional option for reducing their costs. According to Hans-Jurgen Mohr, the Bayer management board member responsible for human resources, the sick-leave changes are intended to encourage growth and employment, and they are aimed at further reducing labor costs and strengthening international competitiveness. Among Germany's largest chemical companies, BASF tentatively plans to implement the new law on Nov. 1. Bayer plans to put the new rules into effect, but it will not do so ...